Patong2021

Money and good health are big factors in achieving happiness. The most unhappy are in declining health and of limited financial means.

So many men in the 1-4 category offering their view. How about, they are lucky they can even get their Thai equivalents? Educated, naturally beautiful Thai women with careers are not the least bit interested in the type of men found on AN. If they become involved with a non Thai, he will be of a similar or higher social position and will be just as educated, good looking and wealthy as they are. That's the reality. There is no reason for a successful and pretty Thai woman to take up with a middle aged or older farang with limited financial means and low social standing. The days of buying Thai women with chiclets, soap and pens disappeared 50 +years ago.

This holiday season, I have been eating out frequently in Hua Hin with my friends and am profoundly disappointed by the deterioration in the quality of food at many places that were once reliable and had some semblance of standards. It covers all types of dining. I don't believe it is attributable to the high season surge of visitors, but rather a calculated selection of lower quality ingredients, and the cutting of corners. Am I alone? Here are some examples; - A couple weeks ago I was transiting through Bangkok and statyed at the airport Novotel. Breakfast buffets are never anything to celebrate, but Novotel once had a decent breakfast spread. What I experienced was empty selection offerings and what was available was cold. This was at 8:30 AM after the breakfast rush. -Stayed at a Dusit, which is usually reliable and consistent in its quality. 500 baht for breakfast buffet and that also featured empty serving trays. It was a farce. -Had dinner last week at my once favourite Brazilian steak house in town. They come along and carve off beef, lamb, chicken whatever. I had not eaten here in 6 months as I was scaling back on beef. Well, what a shock. The beef was tough, and limited. Instead, they tried to push the pork belly, pineapple, greasy chicken wings. The result is that I won't go back. - Had breakfast at Coffee Club. It was just unappetizing . Not bad, but not good. - Tried a chain - **** ***nection. A 3200 baht insult with a nasty beef serving. - Had a Burger King Chicken crispy yesterday and it left me feeling ill. Smeared with white goo, wilted lettuce, and characterized by grease. -Yesterday, breakfast at a local go to place that I usually enjoy. Just awful. The bacon was 2 flat wedges of fried sliced fat. 200 baht. - Last week, Chicken Curry at one of my regular restaurants. I was laid out with awful food poisoning for 2 days. I was literally leaking crap and could not stray far from the toilet. - Went to the fish strip at the night market. The fish I was served, was not fresh. The other dishes were greasy. 1500 baht for a mediocre experience at a place that had once been decent. The only reliable and consistently good experience has been with Starbucks. Its bakery items are always fresh. I will be mostly eating at home for the coming weeks. Ok, so this may read like a rant, but I just can't get over how quickly the quality of restaurant dining has deriorated in the past few months. Looking at many of the visitors who are in the estaurants, I don't think many of them know that they are being taken advantage of. In years past there were lots of wine and cocktail drinkers, Now, so many of them are beer drinkers and ordering much less than before. Ok, so I am over reacting, or have you noticed this now too?

Ok then, the Russian economy is doing fantastically well and there is prosperity for all. The Russian visitors to Thailand are just fans of retro wear and their fashion sense causes them to wear the discards from 1980's KMart and Woolworth discount bins. The Russians hunting for marked down food items at Lotus yesterday were just being thrifty. There have been no large social investment projects since Russia started its war. No university, no hospital, no transportation infrastructure rejuvenation unless it is directly war related. A nation that does not invest in itself is doomed.

Let's see if it actually launches and can remain operating for 72 hours without a crash.

I never applied to join the Foreign Office. As I am a white heterosexual male, the chances of me even being considered would have been remote.

Pattaya has such excitement.

I visited last Christmas after a 5 year absence.🤪 And how would you like me to change my user name? Please let us know.

And was Trump appropriate when he tried to bully Senator Clinton with his chants of lock her up? He is the coinvicted felon and failed insurrectionist who should be locked up.

US government had a duty to warn Jamal Kashoggi of the Saudi plot which US intelligence had identified. Kashoggi was a resident of the USA as a holder of an O Visa. US government failed to warn Kashoggi. Hence, the financial settlement.

I again thank myself for leaving Patong.

At 2ndary screening for some high risk individuals, otherwise for 99% of people, NO.

Not a question of love, but of being fair, and recognizing that much of what he is blamed for is neither merited nor supported by the data for that period. No, PM Blair did not open the door to mass migration. On the contrary, it was the gross incompetence, the ineptidute of successive Conservative administrations coupled with crippling court rulings since 2010 that have rendered the UK immigration policy a farce. Chemical weapons ordinance continues to be found up until this time. Some of it is left over from the first Fulf war, others are from depots that were previously unidentified. So yes there is chemical warfare ordinance to be found in Iraq. This is well documented. Yes, yellow cake Uranium that can be used in dirty bombs was discovered and disposed of by the US government in 2008. The resulting mess is a reflection of the Arabs themselves. When Europe was liberated from the brutal dictatorship first from the Nazis and then from Soviet barbarism it fluorished and did not descend into chaos. When South Korea and many latin American countries rid themselves off military dictatorships, ofen after civil wars, they evolved into functiong free states. The Arabs have to take responsibility for their own hatreds and feuds. Also, the undeniable fact is that a large part of Iraq's mess today is because of Iran and its promotion of sectarian strife turning shiite against sunni. Yes, my comment on the risks facing military personnel speaks volumes about me. Don't join the military if you do not expect to face risk and to have the potential to be injured or die. The military is not a holiday camp.This has been impressed upon me by successive generations of family members who volunteered for active service and it was made clear to me at OTC. What do you think the military is? A place to ride around in big vehicles and to play with things that go boom? Everyone who serves knows the risks and also knows that their life has value and will be valued. That's why safety protocols are repeatedly drilled into personnel. More people die in vehicle accidents and from general health related conditions than battle injuries. There were a total of 135 combat mortalities in Iraq since 1984. That's 40 years and multiple actions, some of which predate and occur after Blair. In any given year there are 60-75 deaths in the UK military. In 2023 there were 73 deaths. The three leading causes of death in 2023 among the UK regular armed forces were cancers (25%), other accidents (22%), and land transport accidents (16%). Even suicide, which is problem with young people today is at a lower rate in the military than it is in the general population. Do we blame PM Thatcher for the loss of 255 personnel in the liberation of the Falklands? Some do, but I do not.

The thread reads like a discourse on the merits of enemas. The mentally ill collective. I have only put one name on ignore, Gamma, as its content of nonsense was just so annoying and idiotic that it caused me to log off. The reality of Covid. It killed off multiple members and caused many others to go home. I still can't believe that we lived through that horrific event. I remember Keene's mustard from my childhood. It was real mustard. Not like the watery yellow coloured Heinz stuff we see today.

Your unit is more exposed to weather damage. The winds off the ocean during a storm can be intense. Nothing says fun like debris crashing into the windows.

And a most unpleasant way to celebrate Christmas for the deceased's survivors.

Tales from a world I have never seen, nor experienced. And one I do not wish too. This is just so low end and hillbilly.

Nice way to spark a civil war. The reality is that Trump won the election and the people have spoken. They can speak again in 2 years and vote to give the Democrats control of the House and Senate. Then they can impeach him.

President Biden is being Presidential. This is how Obama behaved after Trump won his election. It is not how Trump behaved after he lost his election. It is an exercise in showing someone how to do the right thing.

Not on one operative's information, but on a long history of Iraqi use of poison gas, chemical agents, torture and a nuclear R&D infrastructure. What we see now is a campaign of disinformation and misrepresentation driven by a political agenda. You hate Blair, so you come up with an interpretation of events that supports your bias. Blair was a very thoughtful and morally circumspect man. He was given to over consideration of moral outcomes, and agonized over the decision to support the USA. It was not a decision taken in isolation, and relied heavily upon pressure from Gulf Arabs. Iraq was the nation which had previously invaded Kuwait and ruthlessly looted the nation. It had not reformed. Your concern for dead service people would be touching if it was not so insincere. All military personnel were volunteers. They all knew that there was the potential to die when they enlisted. People die in service. That's part of the reality. Militaries are not NGO's nor conveyances of good tidings. The reaity is that the removal of the Baathist tyranny, liberated the Iraqi people from a regime which tortured, raped, sodomized, and brutalized it's own people. It singled out ethnic Iraqis such as the Marsh Arabs and Kurds for ethnic genocide. Hundreds of thousands of them died at the hands of the Hussein regime, and one never heard a word of condemnation from the likes of Corbyn, Galloway, Abbott and others.

With that logic, why limit yourself to one gender. You should try all of them.

Waiting for my friend then we are off to the fish strip at the night market in Hua Hin for seafood. I am craving a grilled fish.

I expect that the impeachment process will start next midterms once the Democrats win back control of House and Senate.

Thatis one heck of a dad joke.

And for all that you write, you have no data, just specuation. Until the economic results are there, one can not claim a failure occurred. In respect to your example from Pimlico Plumbers, the man has been whinging for years. He was so patriotic that he sold his business to US VC fund KKR sometime ago, didn't he? More recently his firm lost a key case where it tried to keep tradespeople from their earned vacation wages. https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/pimlico-plumbers-loses-landmark-uk-holiday-pay-case. Hardly the type of person who can is taking care of his workers is he?